Through the use of impression management, organizations aim to shape audiences’ perceptions of important corporate events, which enables them to effectively influence the behavior of crucial stakeholders such as investors, analysts, or journalists. Drawing on Upper Echelons Theory, we examine how CEO narcissism influences a firm’s impression management behavior during acquisitions. Due to their grandiose nature, positive expectancy bias and low motivation to avoid undesirable outcomes, we expect more narcissistic CEOs to be less likely to engage in impression management aimed at reducing negative stakeholder reactions often accompanying large takeovers. Accounting for the multidimensionality of narcissism we further theorize that this relationship is moderated by a CEO’s incentives and ability to utilize impression management. Using a dataset of 648 acquisitions, we show that the relationship between CEO narcissism and impression management is not straightforward but appears to be moderated by the CEO’s reputational status. In contrast to prior research, our results suggest that shareholders’ and analysts’ valuations of the acquisition remain unaffected by impression management efforts. Our findings contribute to the literature on impression management, CEO narcissism and corporate governance.